Obama's Big State Of The Union Lie

"Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs," said President Obama, who was roundly applauded in his State... View Enlarged Image

'Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health-care costs," the president claimed Tuesday.

This ranks as one of the biggest State of the Union whoppers ever told.

In fact, not only are health-care costs climbing, but employers are also shifting those costs onto the very "middle-class" families Obama spent much of his speech championing.

Since ObamaCare was enacted, family health-insurance premiums on average have soared $3,000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The president promised the law would slash premiums by an average of $2,500 per family.

That means he's broken his word by $5,500. And costs are expected to continue to balloon as the major provision of his law — universal coverage — kicks in next year.

Aetna, for one, expects premiums to shoot up 20% to 50% after some 40 million Americans start to enter the system for the first time in 2014. That does not count the more than 11 million illegal immigrants Obama would make eligible through amnesty.

Studies show personal spending on health care typically doubles after people go on insurance.

ObamaCare already imposes a raft of new mandates on insurance that have added to the cost of coverage, including a ban on lifetime caps, limits on out-of-pocket expenses, and a requirement that family plans cover children until they turn 26.

To soften the impact of these new expenses, employers are making their employees pay for care up front through higher annual deductibles.

The latest employer survey by Kaiser shows a huge leap in the number of employer health plans requiring workers to meet high deductibles before insurance pays for their medical expenses.

The foundation says the share of workers with deductibles of $1,000 or more for individuals more than tripled to 34% last year from just 10% in 2006.

Fully 70% of large companies, including General Electric, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and American Express, recently have shifted all or most employees to high-deductible coverage, according to benefits consultant Towers Watson.

Many corporations now require salaried workers to pay yearly deductibles as high as $5,000 for families.

Smaller employers are also desperate to contain ObamaCare's cost hikes.

Among those Americans employed by small firms, Kaiser found that almost half are now in high-deductible plans.

The latest data show employers are simply shifting health-care costs onto their employees by increasing workers' contributions to health coverage and offering expensive high-deductible health plans to absorb the cost of ObamaCare, which will only get worse when the law fully goes into effect.

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